The Google Maps interface is a bit meh and the “formatted” data is also a bit meh but the data is useful when travelling (NOTE: always use a VPN in airports on both your mobile devices and laptops).

You don’t need their app or online access to take advantage of this data if you’re willing to do a tiny bit of work. apply

You’ll find an R-generated version of the airport Wi-Fi finder below or via this direct link.

The premise is simple:

grab the airport data KML that the Google Maps interface uses (NOTE: Visit the original URL from the Tweet occasionally to see if the KML URL changes)

make cleaner, more formatted text for the popups

toss up a leaflet map

add a searchable DT::datatable interface

render the R markdown page to HTML and keep it with you

refresh the generated HTML right before you go on your world tour

The code is directly embedded in the generated R markdown document and also in this gist so I won’t pollute this post with code blocks.

I’m hoping @bhaskar_vk will apply his mad, l33t Leaflet h@x0r $k1llz to this crude, quick hack and kick this up a notch as there is substantial room for improvement. If you give that a go as well, drop a note in the comments or on Twitter. Some ideas for improvement:

better markers (please, not those airplane ones :-)

way better text cleanup

link the table and map (I think that means using Shiny but I’m likely wrong about that)

make it better on mobile (it works on mobile but there are different design considerations to make it more usable on tiny glowing rectangles)

make a “trip planner” Shiny app, letting folks select their airports and produce a handy digital reference card for them as they move about the globe